


Hunter's Moon

by ishafel



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: M/M, Yuletide 2003
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 16:03:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the war, new alliances were formed.  Yuletide 2003</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunter's Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scarlet seraph](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=scarlet+seraph).



What would have happened after that war, if the soldiers of the One God had succeeded? Would the men and women have gone back to their homes and families and enjoyed the rewards of their success? Or would they have sought out other enemies, other Evils, so that now, five hundred years later, you and I would live in a world in which faith and violence were all but synonymous? --Crown of Shadows, C.S. Friedman (492)

At the top there was a small landing where they paused to catch their breath, and a heavy alteroak door barring the way behind. Damien leaned against it, panting. He could feel exhaustion welling up, threatening to overtake him. Tarrant stood motionless, head down, as if he were gathering his strength. He looked human, but he did not look beaten; his face, shadowed, was unchanged and only the darkness like bruises, the faint lines around the mouth, hinted at the change. He had been beautiful, the Hunter, beautiful the way a hawk in flight was beautiful, a fine sword with a fresh edge, a perfectly executed charge in battle.

Gerald Tarrant was as beautiful, but he lacked the ruthless cruelty that had defined the Hunter. Damien could see in him the man he had once been: the philosopher, the nobleman, the prophet and prince of the church. His breeding was obvious, in the shape of his face and hands, in the way he wore his clothes. His intelligence shone from his eyes as it always had, but there was a steadiness now that had not always been there. He looked, now, like a man one could trust with one's life. Damien had admired him for a very long time. He had desired him for nearly as long. Only now did he realize that he loved him.

"Gerald," he said, and his voice made the words a question. "We don't have to do this, you know."

Tarrant looked up. Something kindled in his eyes, something Damien recognized. "You don't have to," he answered wearily. "I do. But you must get clear, Vryce, while there is still time."

He did not say-damn him-that he could not bear for Damien to be hurt, or that he would like them to face death together. This happened only in Damien's imagination. But what went next was real enough, and something Damien would never forget. He grabbed for Tarrant's arm, meaning to dissuade the other man. Meaning only that. But Tarrant stumbled against him, so that Damien was pressed against the wall, the stone hard against his back. Tarrant tasted of blood and he kissed like a drowning man, but it was Damien who was drowning. When he could breathe again he opened his eyes and saw that Tarrant had drawn back a little and was watching him. "Is this what you wanted, Vryce?" the Hunter asked.

Something in Damien tore. He would never be the same man again, never be the priest of the one God ready to give anything for his faith. He had found a new religion. "Yes," he gasped, and the word sounded odd even to his own ears.

"Yes, Gerald, please."

"Good." There was a trace of the old savagery in the Hunter's voice, but his hands as he drew Damien down were perfectly temperate. Their cloaks made very little padding on the rough ground, and the knowledge that death waited behind the door never left them. They came together quickly and with little preparation, and it was painful as a sword thrust and Damien knew that he would never, never feel as complete as he did then. Here was his One God, in the moment of climax, as he had never felt divinity at prayer. He had lain with a man only once before, a hasty fumbling that he had regretted almost immediately. This was different, this was forever, and when it was done the Hunter went to his death.

The next time Damien Vryce lay with Gerald Tarrant they were both of them different people. Damien kept his name, his face, but he lost his vocation and his calling. Tarrant lost his name and his face but his profession stayed the same. Damien was an officer in the army of the One God; he had answered the call for crusade, though he had done it meaning to prevent the war. He had meant to end his own life to prevent this fae driven army from rolling across Erna and destroying everything and everyone that could not be converted. They had offered him a commission and they had insisted he meet the leader hired to take charge of the army. So easily, he had been lost.

Damien had been born to fight, and sometimes it seemed to him that he was more warrior than priest. But the most dedicated of soldiers grow weary in the face of endless war. The most tireless of hunters tire in the end of the taste of blood. They were both tired, he and the man the Hunter had become. He shifted on the narrow cot, wedged between the tent wall and Riv's back. Riv's smooth, tan back, muscled from the hard campaign. His skin was warm to the touch, his breathing steady. Human. Nothing less and nothing more.

They did not, either of them, speak of what had gone before, of what the man who was now Riven Forrest had been. There was no room for Gerald Tarrant here, no room for him anywhere in their world. And yet, Damien sometimes wondered if things would have been different, if it had been the Hunter and not Riv by his side. Riv could lead the human armies, could give them direction, keep them crusading and not massacring. But he could not stop them. The Hunter would have been able to stop them; he had had not only charisma to draw on but also his Adept's powers.

Once anyone had been able to bind the fae, but since the Patriarch died it required a sacrifice. More, it required blood. And what greater sacrifice was there than the sacrifice of one's life for one's faith? And so the great army rolled unstoppably across Erna, converting or destroying all in its path. And at its head were the two men the old Patriarch had most feared: Damien Vryce, failed priest, and Riven Forrest, former prophet and the man who had been the Hunter. They led the army because they could not stop it, and because other men might lead it to do worse.

Riv moaned in his sleep and rolled over, hard, into him. Damien put out a hand to steady him, steady them both, against the nightmares. Blood, there was always blood in the dreams, as once there had been blood on his hands. Riv dreamed of being the Hunter and it made Damien hard to think of him so. He had fucked Riv a hundred times since the war had begun, lain with him in the dust within feet of the road, on the banks of a river, had him bent over the campaign table in the commandant's tent, fresh off the field and both of them still in the armor that did so little to stop a bullet. There were no secrets to Riv's body, no part of it that Damien did not know far better than his own.

He had had Gerald Tarrant only once; to be more accurate Tarrant had him, that last awful night on the way to the Forest. There had been little time for tenderness, and no time at all for words. Only Gerald, beautiful despite it all, his eyes dark circled, his fine hands gentle on Damien's body. It had been the best fuck of his life, there in the tunnel, but it had been less about desire than desperation.

Riv was something else again; he was heir to the Hunter's elegant, layered mind, and he had a smoothly muscled form Damien found attractive. But there was little of Gerald Tarrant that showed, and no way of knowing how much remained. Only the nightmares, the dark dreams that might once have fed the Hunter, and now haunted Riv. But there was one cure at least for the nightmares.

There was Damien's hands on Riv's body, Damien's mouth on Riv's, Damien thrusting into Riv until they both came and the coming woke Riv. Once long ago he had followed the Hunter into hell and bought him back. Now he was the damned one; Riv's sins had been wiped clean, surely, by the death of Gerald Tarrant. Now it was Damien who sinned, Damien who dreamed of the hunt, the kill, and woke on the edge of orgasm. And all the while the army marched and conquered in the name of the One God, and the rivers of Erna ran red with blood.

The Hunter might have stopped it, but Damien was the only one who wanted him back.


End file.
